With the recent proliferation of portable, battery-powered devices, there has been a concurrent demand for portable, easy to use battery charging devices. The ideal portable (i.e. travel) battery charger would be a low-cost, low-weight device which is plugged directly into a wall outlet. Such a device would require built-in protection from overcurrent while charging directly from a wall outlet. Moreover, in an effort to reduce cost and weight, such a device should avoid using numerous other components such as a step-down transformer, series dropping resistor, or capacitive reactance dropper.
Unfortunately, when doing away with these types of devices, it has heretofore been the case that the charging apparatus does not provide adequate protection to batteries put into the device. Accordingly, overcharge and other dangerous situations are more likely to occur in such devices.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a portable, light-weight battery charging device that provides the user thereof with adequate safety considerations, while not detrimentally affecting the batteries disposed therein.